Abstract

Social survey questionnaires were carried out with 1431 residents in order to explore the human response to vibration in residential environments. Three different sources of vibration were investigated – railways (931 respondents), construction activity (350 respondents), and internal sources of vibration (150 respondents). This report provides an overview of respondent characteristics for each sample, a review of self-reported vibration and noise annoyance ratings for each of the three sources, whilst exploring how contextual and other personal and social factors may shape residents’ responses to vibration in their homes. Differences between sources of vibration and the responses elicited are also discussed.
Annoyance responses were gathered on five-point semantic and eleven-point numerical scales (see Technical Report 2: Measurement of Response for the development of the social survey questionnaire). Drawing on the recommendation of Schultz (1978) to take the top 27-29% of a response scale to create highly annoyed categories, those respondents giving a rating of 8, 9, or 10 on the eleven-point numerical scale (27.3% of the scale) for vibration and noise were considered to be highly annoyed. For vibration from railways (N = 931) 9.7% were highly annoyed and for vibration from construction activity (N = 350) 37.9% were highly annoyed. For internal sources of vibration (N = 150) a highly annoyed category could not be created as no respondents gave a rating of 8, 9, or 10 on the eleven-point scale. Such findings can be explained by the levels of vibration residents of vibration were exposed to (see Technical Report 6: Determination of Exposure-Response Relationships). However, other factors such as the daily activities vibration disturbs, how acceptable levels of vibration and noise are perceived to be, how sensitive respondents report they are to vibration and noise, and other qualitative data about the respondents relationship with their residential environment, further understandings of annoyance ratings given by those living near railways and construction activity.